The headwinds that capped gold’s rally this year have hit silver with gale force, spurring an exit from exchange-traded funds backed by the metal.

Silver has tumbled about 7 percent since trading at a four-month high in September as precious metals lose favor amid the record-breaking rally in U.S. equity indexes. Solid earnings reports from companies including Caterpillar Inc. are fueling optimism about global growth, bolstering the case for the Federal Reserve to keep raising borrowing costs and hurting the investment appeal of non-interest-bearing assets including gold and silver.

Investors pulled $362 million from iShares Silver Trust this year, setting it on course for the biggest redemption in six years. The exit has shrank holdings in the world’s largest ETF backed by the metal to the least since March 2016. IShares owns about half of the total silver holdings in all silver-backed ETFs tracked by Bloomberg.

If i was holding kilos of gold or silver, i would not dump them only to buy cryptos, and if someone does that, then he is a dumb, i know that we all are strong believers on bitcoin, but it doesnt mean that bitcoin is the most safest thing since year 1. You all know that someday it could just drop, or something like that.Gold has been the most safe currency for more than thousand of years, i dont like to see it replaced by bitcoin, it is something weird, and there is no way to check it.

After people realize and understand about bitcoin of course they will switch to bitcoin to invest, it got more profits, but dont worry about precious metal, precious metal will always valuable because it can be used for making something, silver is needed to make dining equipment and others, so even the investors are dumping, silver will still a valuable metal

I think that the world economy is in better shape now ,compared with all the previous years.That`s why more investors are runing away from safe heaven assets like gold and silver and making riskyinvestments to make more profits.This is good news for the cryptocurrencies,but most of the gold and silver investors don`t understand and don`t trust cryptos,so we will have to wait before they start to buy.

Investors are dumping the fake paper asset - there is a big difference. Not dumping real physical gold or silver. But there is of course people selling physical gold and silver to buy into the crypto space.

I don't know how much this EFF would be representative of precious metals markets. There has been discussion in the past about money flowing alongside metal and cryoto markets as both speculators in the two are upholding similar standards in terms of ideological beliefs. I don't think there's reason to attack gold and silver bugs for that matter.

If only I am rich enough, I would have taken advantage of this. Having multiple investments is still better. Like one of the previous replies said, it would have been nice if we know how much of these are then reinvested into cryptocurrency, though I guess that would have been impossible since there seem to be no mechanism to dump these metals and have the value directly invested into bitcoins.

If i was holding kilos of gold or silver, i would not dump them only to buy cryptos, and if someone does that, then he is a dumb, i know that we all are strong believers on bitcoin, but it doesnt mean that bitcoin is the most safest thing since year 1. You all know that someday it could just drop, or something like that.Gold has been the most safe currency for more than thousand of years, i dont like to see it replaced by bitcoin, it is something weird, and there is no way to check it.

Actually, I will not do the same but the chance right now, crypto have much potential to get the profit back compare to the silver, although you loss some on silver, in crypto you will get that instantly. So I think if they dump it and start to buy crypto right now then it is really a good choice. But if they want to have a very long term investment may be they should not dump it and try to buy everything they can including aome crypto